The Politics of Victimhood and Shame—Mark 8:27-38 and Isaiah 50:4-9a

“Victimhood culture” has swept our nation in recent years where victimhood has become an identity to be ashamed of. However, Jesus teaches his followers to bear their victimhood without shame, just as he bore his own without shame.

Mark 8:27-3827 Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way he asked his disciples, ‘Who do people say that I am?’ 28And they answered him, ‘John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.’ 29He asked them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’ Peter answered him, ‘You are the Messiah.’ 30And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him.

31 Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. 32He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. 33But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, ‘Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.’

34 He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 35For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel,will save it. 36For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? 37Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? 38Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.’

Isaiah 50:4-9a4 The Lord God has given me the tongue of a teacher,that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word.Morning by morning he wakens— wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught. 5 The Lord God has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious, I did not turn backwards. 6 I gave my back to those who struck me, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard;I did not hide my face from insult and spitting.

7 The Lord God helps me; therefore I have not been disgraced;therefore I have set my face like flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame; 8 he who vindicates me is near.Who will contend with me? Let us stand up together.Who are my adversaries? Let them confront me. 9 It is the Lord God who helps me; who will declare me guilty?All of them will wear out like a garment; the moth will eat them up.

One
will often find the word “victim” spoken with a distinct disdain. Bradley
Campbell’s recent publication condemns The
Rise of Victimhood Culture. Such a “victimhood culture” we are told, is
particularly rampant in universities. While at the same time, the president of
the United States argues that he is in fact the true victim: “The victim here
is the President.” (Twitter, @realdonaldtrump, Oct 25, 2017).

There
are those with a “victim mentality”; those who “play the victim card”; those
who “self-victimize.” This culture of
victimhood is particularly troubling because, in the words of Haidt and
Lukianoff’s The Coddling of the American
Mind, victimhood “has created a fragile generation.”

We are to be rugged individualists, whereas the victim requires systems of
communal support. We are to be victorious, while the victim is defeated. We are
to be strong; the victim is weak. In sum, it
is shameful to be a victim.

In
“victimhood culture” this fragility and weakness is internalized. Millennials
are “generation snowflake”; they require safe-spaces and can’t handle
disagreement. Victimhood has become an identity. They should be ashamed. Or so we are told.

Yet,
the Christian gospel offers a considerably different triangulation of identity,
victimhood, and shame, a way of rethinking the relationship between weakness
and shame, between victimhood and identity.

Indeed,
the eighth chapter of Mark is centrally concerned with the unique identity of
Jesus. Jesus’ two questions—“who do people say that I am? … who do you say that
I am?” (verses 27, 29)—continually echo throughout these passages. It is Peter
alone who is able to cut through the possibilities and land on the decisive answer:
“you are the Messiah” (verse 29).

But
this victory is short-lived. For despite correctly naming Jesus, it is
immediately apparent that Peter fundamentally misunderstands Jesus’ ultimate
identity. As Jesus explains: “the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and
be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed”
(verse 31). In the image of Isaiah, the messiah will be a servant who is
“despised and rejected by others; a man of suffering … oppressed and …
afflicted … by a perversion of justice” (Isaiah 53.3-8). The messiah, Jesus
explains, will be a victim.

In
fact, Christianity retains precisely this language today. The Eucharistic Host,
the body and blood of Jesus, are themselves regularly marked as “the
victim”—from the Latin victima: “to
choose, separate out, set aside as holy, consecrate, sacrifice.” As one reads
in the Council of Trent: “for the victim is one and the same, the same now
offering by the ministry of priests, who then offered Himself on the cross, the
manner alone of offering being different.”

But
this victimhood fundamentally disturbs Peter’s understanding of the messianic
identity. Surely the messiah will be rugged, strong, victorious, and honorable.
The messiah will be a king in the line of David. The messiah will overturn the
Romans, and reestablish the Kingdom of Israel. A humiliating death? That is too
shameful for the messiah. And so Peter “began to rebuke him” (verse 32).

Jesus’s
response is infamously sharp: “get behind me, Satan!” (verse 33). Peter is here
called Satan not because he is evil. Indeed, the figure of Satan has appeared
only on one prior instance in the gospel: at Jesus’ temptation in the
wilderness. Thus, Peter is likewise called “Satan” because he offers to Jesus a
temptation. Peter’s rebuke suggests a different road, a different kind of
messiah than the suffering servant: a messiah who would be the victor rather
than the victim, a messiah who would view
victimhood as shame.

But
Jesus rejects this alternative messianism. Castigating Peter, Jesus
doubles-down on his victimhood, not only reaffirming his own coming suffering,
but inviting his followers into this victimhood themselves. “If any want to
become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and
follow me” (verse 34). If any want to follow me, let them self-victimize, let
them play the victim card. But how could Jesus invite his disciples onto this
shameful path?

The architects of the lectionary have perhaps given us a response, insofar as they have paired this week’s gospel reading with Isaiah 50:4-9a. This passage—which would later be paraphrased in the Sermon on the Mount: “if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also” (Matthew 5:39)—disrupts the contemporary correlation between victory and honor, victimhood and shame. The victim of this passage faces the spit and abuse of their adversaries, abuse designed to produce shame and disgrace. And yet, this prophetic figure proclaims: “I have not been disgraced … I know that I shall not be put to shame”—not because victimhood has been avoided for victimhood can’t always be avoided, but because victimhood itself is not shameful.

Thus,
in the same way, Jesus calls his followers to bear their cross, to bear their
victimhood without disgrace. The path of
the messiah may often be a path of suffering, but it is not a path of shame.

Rather, conversely, it is precisely those who reject this path of the suffering servant who are shamed. “Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels” (verse 38). While this passage may be taken in a general sense—e.g. those who reject the divinity of Jesus—its context suggests something more specific. The “words” spoken of here may be precisely those words for which Peter rebuked Jesus: the recognition of impending suffering. Thus as the Church Father Tertullian will later write, “the faithful are not ashamed that the Son of God was crucified.” Victimhood itself is not shameful. This logic is carried to its fulfillment in the writings of the Apostle Paul, whose cruciform theology centers not divine strength, but divine weakness: “God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.” (1 Corinthians 1:25). Or as this logic is internalized in the 2nd letter to the Corinthians:

Therefore, to keep me from being too elated, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from being too elated. Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me, but he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Corinthians 12:7-10)

But
the point here risks overstatement. Suffering
is not good. Suffering is not an end in itself. It seems to stretch
hermeneutic plausibility to suggest that Jesus is here advocating a
self-flagellating attitude which would seek out suffering or pain.

Rather,
this logic of weakness, which encourages followers to take up one’s cross,
serves to remind us that even if painful, even if it is not good, suffering is
not shameful. While being a victim is not an end in itself, neither is being a
victim a mark of disgrace. When one turns victimhood into disgrace—whether to
chastise college students or shame the president—one employs a dangerous logic
that correlates honor and strength, victimhood and shame. Regardless of its
intention, this logic emboldens the strong by moralizing their victory, while
victim-shaming precisely those who have been cast down by the powerful.

But in
the words of Paul, the correlation goes in precisely the opposite direction,
“God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is
weak in the world to shame the strong” (1 Corinthians 1:27). It is the victim
that calls us to our moral responsibility, that reminds us to invest in systems
of communal support, that reminds us to care for one another when we are weak.

So, if you find yourself the bearer of a cross, if you find yourself a victim, may you remember that you have value and worth. May you remember that dignity is not the same thing as strength, nor victory the same thing as honor. And may you find comfort in the victim who came before you, and who is sung of in the hymn O Salutaris Hostia (O Saving Victim):